The World's Largest Conversation

In this imaginary building the size of London, every two of the people in the building could talk to each other if they wished. The city-sized building is divided into wings, the wings into floors, and each floor into millions of rooms. Some of the rooms have a big blackboard that anyone can scribble anything on. The posted information can be a written message, an image, a movie, a whale song, a conversation---anything. Anyone looking into such a conference room can see everything on its blackboard.

In other rooms of the giant communication building, groups of people you can't see---and who can't see you (at least today)---are chatting. They're all madly scribbling on the same blackboard at the same time, each one in a separate little area. They can all see what everyone else is scribbling, so it's a kind of ongoing written conversation---a visible chat.

In thousands of other rooms, people are playing very specialized games, writing a kind of continuing, do-it-yourself novel. Each person is a character, or more than one character, in a fantasy world conjured into existence by the words of all the other participants. They're having an experience---a very addictive experience.

Still other rooms are sites of town meetings. The residents of these towns may have never met physically and may live all over the world. But they are all passionately interested in a certain topic---perhaps gun control, tea drinking, computer crime, recycling, or white supremacy. The list of topics goes on and on. From bondage to beauty queens, from Tibetan ashrams to drug abuse, from action films to Japanese haikus---whatever your kink, on the net you'll find thousands, perhaps millions of others who share it.

Some of those following a discussion never contribute anything to it, and many net denizens follow numerous discussions. People can create new discussion rooms if they want to, once they find others to talk to. If they wish they can make their conferences private, so that outsiders have to be initiated to be let in.

Everyone on the net also has a private lockable room. Inside it you can have complete privacy if you wish, although it has a pneumatic tube others can use to send you messages. Those messages might be anything---a brief note, a video conference call, a movie extract. You can choose to read the messages, destroy them, edit them, save them, repost them, or do whatever else you wish with them. You can send mail to yourself, to a specific person or group, or to one or more of the blackboards in the building. On the door of your room you can also post information you want browsers to read. Such messages can be of any length---even whole encyclopedias' worth---and they can be so interesting that hundreds of thousands of people, instead of joining the various conversations going on around the building, simply roam the corridors, teleporting themselves from door to door and reading the information posted there.

Thousands of rooms aren't owned by people at all but are used by governments and corporations. AT&T is there, as are the White House, Fuji Electric, many high schools, museums, and libraries---even some vending machines. Their doors, like yours, display information they want the world to read. In all, there are millions of rooms in the city-sized building and, like everything else about the net, their number is doubling every few months.

The net is already bigger than the population of Canada and Australia combined. At its present growth rate, when it doubles it will add the populations of Tokyo-Yokohama (about twenty-eight million people), Mexico City (about twenty-three million), and Sao Paolo (about twenty-one million). And then it should double again. The net is a coffeehouse the size of Wyoming.

And as in a coffeehouse, no one is in charge on the net. Rank, appearance, and social standing in the outside world mean nothing there unless they help guarantee someone's knowledge. Denizens of this vast building work at their own pace, choosing the size and timing of their postings and replies or simply sitting back and reading. Those who only read are there for amusement, or information, or bonding. Those who post messages are there for the same things, or for self-display, prestige, friendship, or an argument. Everyone is there for communion.

This is a social gathering different in style, scope, and scale from anything we know. It isn't a cocktail party, although it's a little like one. It isn't an office meeting, although it can sometimes seem like one. It isn't a picnic, a party, a riot, a face-to-face conversation, or a get-together around the water cooler. Nor is it a bunch of notices thumbtacked to a bulletin board or graffiti scrawled on a toilet wall. It's all of the above and none of the above. It's a new thing---a groupmind.

The net is a place to make friends, annoy or amuse others, sell stuff, gain attention, lose respect, display knowledge, learn new things, and think about reality and your place in it. It's an electronic hivemind, a breathing encyclopedia, a living Talmud, a source of social comfort, a flea market, a place of ideas, a place of amusement, and a place for communion. It's the net in the nineties.

Drinking from a Firehose